The Bottom Line: Real estate brokers take to their Segways for Long Beach tour

But when the Downtown Long Beach Associates offered a tour on Segways, he jumped at the chance.

"I've done tons of broker tours, but I've never done one on a Segway - I've never even been on a Segway," said Beat, a residential broker dabbling in the commercial side of the business.

Beat joined more than a dozen brokers participating in the Downtown Long Beach Segway Tour for Retail Brokers on Wednesday.

DLBA officials, which present the biannual tours, said they wanted to do a twist on the traditional brokers tour, which usually involves a bus full of people touring a city in the hopes that it will lead to leasing deals.

"How can we reinvent this concept in a way that provides a creative approach to advancing the basic knowledge of real estate?" said Kristopher Larson, DLBA vice president in charge of economic development. "That's where we came up with the idea of Segways. Downtown is a very walkable area, and we've got the Segway (storefront) here. The Segway was a way to introduce something more fun and differentiate ourselves from other communities and organizations."

On a sunny afternoon, Segway-riding brokers rolled down Ocean Boulevard, Pine Avenue and the Promenade. They stopped at 11 locations, winding their way through the former Masonic Temple building space on Pine. They rode to the space formerly occupied by the Blue Cafe and to Gallery 421, where brokers saw the traffic coming off the Long Beach (710) Freeway and the new courthouse being built - all potential customers for their clients. They heard from DLBA president and CEO Kraig Kojian and a Long Beach planning officer, who answered questions about zoning and other issues, and ended the tour with the Taste of Downtown, held on the waterfront.

Tony Shooshani, managing member of Shooshani Developers LLC, which owns City Place, said the Segway tour allows them to quickly show Long Beach to 20 to 25 brokers from Southern California and the region.

"Instead of taking an entire afternoon, we're able to cover a lot of ground within an hour," he said. "The Segways are good for that. It's fun, it's exciting and everyone gets a partnership deal going because we're all doing something cool together. It creates an environment where you want to do deals."

For Shooshani, the tour has led to talks with prospective clients.

"Some of these brokers we've gone on the tours with have come back and have done LOIs (letters of intent) with brokers," he said. "We actually closed one deal as a result of stuff we've done. It's been very productive."

Though born and raised in Long Beach, Beat said the tour gave him a unique insight into downtown.

"I've been on the streets of Pine Avenue a bunch of times, but I've never really been out of my car and up and down where we went," he said. "The Segway gives you a lot of ability to access all that stuff, especially up and down the Promenade.

"I have a couple of clients in mind that I would definitely show these properties to, and hopefully we'll do a deal."